Monday, February 8, 2021

Living in a Caddisfly Case: Part Seven

 By Cassie Sevigny

Moving to Montana was my first foray into full-scale independence. Responsible for feeding myself. No family, no friends. When the people and city were unfamiliar, I met the details of Montana’s landscape. The mountains and evergreen forests reminded me of Washington. Montana huckleberries used to feel foreign and wild, a reminder of how far from home I was, but knowing this little sour red huckleberry existed in the place I had left made me feel like a rhizome that had tunneled from the Puget Sound to Missoula, sprouting and growing in a new direction.
Like a caddisfly in a stream or my child self on the beach, I built a home from pieces of the world around me – the mica-rich rocks, swathes of color-changing larch, fire-forged morels and huckleberries, even a red crayfish who eyed me from a stone dropped long ago by a valley-carving glacier. And like caddisflies and huckleberries, I can make my home in both Washington and Montana.

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